Just the Way You Are (1984)

Perfect cast and a good story

The movie is made so realistic it has a lot of that WoW feeling at the right moments and never tooo over the top. the suspense is done so well and the emotion is felt. Very well put together with the music and all.

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

For a synopsis of the plot, read one of the many other reviews. The reason I loved this movie when I saw it (stuck on a tarmac in a stifling plane in Hawaii for two hours) is that I also have a lame leg, from polio, and had to wear a walking cast for an injury at one time (one ofmany injuries, actually). It was the only time I felt I could walk normally, since one of my legs is two inches shorter than the other, weak and partially paralyzed. I loved that when the heroine had an acceptable reason to limp - the ski injury with cast on the leg - she was an equal. I have often felt that in relationships it has been hard for men to judge me on my inner merit because I am lame. It is one thing to love a lame person, but another to commit a lifetime with her. Or him. I have been married and deeply in love for two decades, but there were a lot of years of difficulty prior to that when I took up with men I should not have, just to be in a relationship. When I saw this movie, I could SO relate to the character's having a chance to be seen as a normal person.

If you need any proof why Kristy McNichol never made the jump from TV star to movie star, look no further than this laughably bad "romantic" romp. Kristy was apparently going through a crisis during the shooting of this film -- and it shows. But not every fault can be blamed on her infamous "chemical imbalance." Kristy just never had the chops for the big screen. Her love scenes are painfully awkward. She looks with more lustful longing at a female ballerina than she does with studly suitors Michael Onktean and Tim Daly. Her role calls for her to play a handicapped musician, but she can't even remember to limp in many of her scenes. It's hard to believe that she was once such a bright star. She's barely going through the motions here, and it ain't pretty.

Watchable little semi-soaper, but hardly captivating. Still, two or three funny moments. What amazes me is how slippery and morally highly questionable McNicol is. She plays an invalid (a leg problem), yet she not only isn't the "ugly duckling" whom men shun, but she is even a man-eater - and we are supposed to feel for her! Oh, poor little McNicol, with her leg problem... Poor little McNicol??! She is constantly getting passes from men, and even dumps them without so much as blinking! At one occasion she even has a premeditated one-night affair with a blond stud, and then she tells her newly-found French girlfriend quite non-chalantly that it took him time to get an erection! Makes us viewers wonder why she is so leg-conscious if every guy wants to hump her. Well, almost every guy; the only guy who really shunned her after seeing her leg wrapped up in metal is the guy working on the telephone. But otherwise she seems to be doing just fine with men! No shyness, no lack of success with men, and she throws them away like toys; the way she dumped Carradine was ridiculous. Poor little invalid girl?? I don't think so. And yet we are meant to believe that this woman has a major confidence problem; hence the scene in which she prepares to start playing the flute for a solo concert and somehow manages to throw the notes on the ground out of nervousness. Nervousness?? The rest of the movie shows little or nothing that would suggest that she has confidence problems, so this flute scene is absurd and doesn't fit into the bigger picture. I was also surprised how quickly and eagerly McNicol makes friends with a French woman who is screwing a married guy. On the surface the movie would appear to be a "sentimental story of one crippled woman's struggle for acceptance" (or something like that) but it's nothing like that at all; the writer clearly shifts between this type of movie and a "screw anything that moves - it's the 80s" kind of movie - very confusing.As far as her leg: it's not like she has a big, fat purple balloon growing on her calf muscle. She "only" has a normal-looking metal prosthetic attached to the lower part of her leg, so I really don't understand why the makers of the film try to make it seem as if she is a female Quasimodo or something, at the beginning of the film. It's not like she has a twin head growing out of her neck! Though McNicol is hardly a major catch. Kind of cutish but nothing special, quite average.But what the hell is Carradine doing playing some kind of a (relatively) smooth guy flirting with McNicol and her pal?! This guy was in "Revenge of the Nerds"! But I guess it's the same thing with the Carradines in the movies as it is with the Kennedys in politics: no matter how ugly, unable, or dumb, all the doors are open for a career in movies and politics, respectively.Down with nepotism.If you want to read bogus biographies about the Carradines, and other Hollywood nepotists and morons, contact me by e-mail.

Even Kristy McNichol can't save this movie. She plays a world-famous concert flautist with two flaws: her physical disability, which appears to be a missing lower limb of her right leg, and her emotional disability, which is her self-consciousness about her missing limb. Aside from the utter implausibility of the plot, the picture is grossly overstuffed with television sitcom-esque snow bunny images of a european ski resort. Updated, it might make a great Farrelly brothers comedy. But as is, I would mark it "return to sender."